Slugs and Other Spring Slitherers

In early morn I walked in drizzle beneath overcast skies, my ears and eyes seeking birds. Ruby-crowned kinglets let loose with high-spirited, rollicking songs, their voices, like those of winter wrens...

Snow Like Icing and Birds at the Edge of Winter

On this, the official first day of autumn in Australia, new snow topped with an icy crust glistened like icing over the hills and meadows of Balmoral Mills – one more snowfall on the way to a northe...

Notes on Nuthatches

A new visitor has appeared at my feeder during the past week – a sharp-beaked, red-breasted nuthatch with a body shaped like two stout cones placed base to base. This nuthatch, with its rufous-t...

Black-capped Chickadees: Sweethearts of Canadian Birds

During Vilis’s and my year-long sojourn in Australia in 2010, I sometimes grew homesick for our home in Nova Scotia. At those times, surrounded by brilliantly-coloured parrots and lorikeets, I i...